My Dog is Not Now, Nor Has Ever Been, A Chick Magnet

One great thing about this dog is that he makes me more sociable. Not that we are out on the town every night, or hosting salons or organising picnics or making memorable entrances at masked balls, but there are certain practical concerns in this business of dog ownership which make it necessary to, you know, talk to people and stuff.

I was away for work the other week and a kind neighbour volunteered to look after Freddie. As a matter of fact two separate kind neighbours volunteered their hospitality and it was only through an effort of diplomatic cunning that I managed to prevent the competition over the honour of hosting the animal from escalating into all-out hostility. The point is that it got me talking to my neighbours about bowls, leads, cats and all the logistics of dogsitting. It made me think about other people's convenience - which may not sound like a great deal, but when you are used to being single and living alone, and a tiny bit abstracted at the best of times, it is remarkable how insulated you can get from the practical concerns that govern most people's lives.

And of course I suppose that it was part of the purpose in getting this dog in the first place: to provide a little external obligation, a bit of responsibility to something other than my own non-existent problems, something that depends on and demands a bit of consideration and sanity. Poor old Freddie probably doesn't realise how much he has taken on...

Anyway, apart from this rather desperate clutching after adult maturity, the dog has also increased my contact with other human beings that I don't know. A few weeks ago I took him up through the woods in the snow to a pub at the top of the hill. It was mid-afternoon and the pub was quiet. The dog lay down by the turf fire and attracted the admiration of the handful of middle-aged men who made up the clientele. There was calm good-hunoured talk about what a nice little dog he was, and I, although politely included in this conversation, was by no means central to it; it was all about the dog and I was grateful for the reflected glory.

All of which, I suppose, is just another way of saying that people like cute puppies and Freddie is a cute puppy. I feel proud when people make cutesy faces as we walk by, or when children point out the pup to their parents; and I think less of people who fail to show due appreciation for the magnificence of my animal.

The dog seems to like it too, and I wonder if his appetite for attention is something he has infected with by me (as I write this, the creature has managed to climb up my arm and tried to clamber around my shoulder. I should stop him, but I like the attention as much as he does.) You know when you are a child and you sort of assume that all grown-ups are friends with one another and naturally thrilled to meet you too? I think this is how Freddie approaches the world. I hope he can hold on to that naive cheerfulness for a while. His general charm and his positive influence on me should help him.

Stanford Prison Experiment

Freddie the dog is home and castrated. I was used to the terms "neutered" and "fixed", but they suddenly felt like some evil euphemism like "enhanced interrogation techniques" when the lady asked said "You're here for a castration..?" The woman who asked me - I don't know if she was a veterinary nurse or what - smiled very sweetly as she said it. I suppose these bright and attractive young women, necessarily good with dogs and probably equally good with people, are used to the sight of men wincing in sympathy when they leave their dogs in to be castrated. For some reason this makes me feel slightly pathetic.

I felt considerably less mawkish about taking the animal to be castrated after he escaped the other night. He turned up in the house of a patient neighbour (it is his home from home) but all my handwringing about respect for the personal physical integrity of my little dog seemed a little wishy-washy in the face of the practical necessity of having him fixed, and by the time the nice lady simpered the word "castration" I had settled into a cosy state of responsible melancholy. I felt bad for the poor dog, but I was only doing what had to be done, and I was only following orders.

I imagine that if I had been involved in the Stanford prison experiment (you know in the 70s, I think, when they randomly assigned the roles of prisoner and prison guard to volunteers and observed the brutality into which the "guards" soon fell) I'd have been a great guard. If I had been a subject in that Milgram experiment about obedience to authority, I reckon I would have turned the electric shock dials up to eleven and expected a reward for taking personal initiative.

Anyway, we got Freddie home, and naturally he is miserable. But it's not because he has suffered the indignity of emasculation, it's that he was under general anaesthetic and he can't go for walks and he has to wear this ridiculous cone around his neck. The cone is at least transparent so he has some peripheral vision, but it makes him look demented and it gets in the way of sniffing. He'll get over this, of course. His stitches come out in ten days and he'll resume his life as a pup, and I suppose it might not be a bad thing to live a life unburdened by sex. It is thought that at least part of P.G. Wodehouse's incredibly prolific output may have something to do with his having mumps as a child and just not being that interested in sex, so perhaps he will become a great artist or something.

Tomorrow my dog is going to be neutered...

...And I feel terrible about it. I agreed when I took him in, and I signed a piece of paper to say so, that I'd take him to be neutered when he was six months. Well, time flies when you're a happy little puppy with balls, and he is about to come of age. His coming of age ceremony will consist of his getting his balls chopped off, poor thing. I feel very ambivalent about this. I believe, I suppose, that it's the responsible thing to do - and Dogs in Distress reserve the right to take the dog back if you don't do it - but still... The poor old pup.

I was telling a friend about this awful dilemma when I learned a lesson in humility. My friend said, "Fuck them. Don't get his balls chopped off."
"Yeah, but it's the responsible thing to do..."
"Do you like this dog?"
"Of course."
"Then don't get his balls chopped off. If you consider him some kind of friend, and I see that you do, why would you do that to him. How would you like it?"

I find that very hard to argue with. But, with a heavy heart, I'm still going to do it. I'm going to take him there tomorrow morning.

I'm going to take him out for a walk in a bit and I'm wondering if, after the operation he'll have quite the same joie de vivre about going for walks that he has now? I hope so, but I'm not betting on it. I wouldn't. Poor pup.

There's a battle of wits going on between me and this dog and I'm wondering if after the operation Freddie will have quite the appetite for the struggle for dominance that seems to be going on between us. I hope so, but again, I'm not betting on it.

The battle ground for this contest is the back garden. Freddie has two hobbies - chewing and sniffing. The chewing is not something I really approve of and I'm trying to get him out of it, but the sniffing is something for which I am proud of him. I think it demonstrates a keen and lively intelligence, and an admirable curiosity about the world, good qualities in a nice little terrier-style dog. The problem is that it leads him to want to breach the bounds of the back garden and venture out into the field behind, and a whole new universe of interesting smells, and I can't have this. So, I supervise when he goes out in the garden and he's always trying to catch me out. (Also, he doesn't come when he's called, unless it suits him). I suppose when he is neutered he will probably be less wilful and maybe safer to be let out in the garden, but in a way I'll miss the thrill of mental combat with this pup. Poor thing.

I'm sure he won't really mind too much. He won't know what's going on and he won't know what he's missing as a grown up male dog, and perhaps he will, as a friend suggested to me, be living in a blissfully Edenic puppy-like state, but still. It seems a terrible thing to have to do to an animal whose right it is to expect you to be its friend.

I have a dog

I am a bit suspicious of blogs generally, and I have not kept a diary since I was twelve. I also disapprove on general pronciples of people who go on about their pets. However, I got a puppy in December and I thought, since he has no way of objecting, it might be worth recording a few impressions about the business of having a new dog.

I live on my own, out of town, and this dog and I are spending most of our days together. One thing I am interested in establishing is which of us needs the other more. On the first day he arrived home I felt all the excitement you might expect of a boy with a new puppy. I wanted to show him around the garden and have him curl up on my lap. Freddie (the name he came with, but it suits him) was having none of it and I was left on my own on a Saturday night watching television from the sofa while the dog kept his distance and wondering if I was more needy than a four month old puppy. This was kind of humiliating but interesting too and as Freddie and I get to know each other better I am constantly intrigued and entertained by the battle of will and wits that goes on between myself and this young animal.

I will describe him briefly and maybe put up a picture or two, although I really don't want this blog to become a record of vaccinations and bowel movements, cute and all as those are. To begin with, when he came (from Dogs in Distress, a fine organisation run very nice people who would not, I think, object to being described as "dog people") he was described as a terrier cross. I think there is a bit of dachsund in him; the shape of his head and the way it curves into his very slightly elongated body make me think this. Also the way he flings flowerpots around, shaking them fiercely and jerking his head in a way that suggests that somewhere in his ancestry was a dog bred for killing rats. I think the other part of him is probably Jack Russell or something. Anyway, all that is to say is that he is a small handsome dog, and I think a clever one, although I am no expert when it comes to gauging the intelligence of dogs. (I may just want him to be clever, because since I first began thinking of getting a dog my ideal was to have a small, smart dog, businesslike and with a rich inner life...) He is lively, calm when he needs to be, affectionate to the point of sluttishness and more or less perfect for me.

The thing is, though, that I feel my response to this dog says a lot about me. When I say that his smallness and smartness and affection are perfect for me, I suspect that what I mean is that I have chosen a dog that reflects what I would like to see in myself. I assume that it is normal to project my own personality onto the dog; how far the dog succeeds in avoiding my projections will be, I think, a measure of his own strength of character. As an adult human I have the advantage in terms of physical power over the dog, and I imagine that over time, Freddie will adopt certain character traits of mine that I am not even aware of, but he also has his small strong hereditary animal will which it is my job to adapt to, and I am interested to see if this negotiation between man and dog will be something worth recording.

Anyway, the hope it that in observing my reactions to Freddie and his to me I'll end up with an interesting record of our first year together. I think it'll be interesting to me, anyway. So why publish it as a blog? Dunno. Just what you do, isn't it...?